The global storage software market saw a third
consecutive quarter of growth as sales of storage resource
management applications took off during the second quarter of the
year, according to research firm IDC.
IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker showed that
the storage software market grew to $1.85bn (£1.03bn) in total
revenue, up 16.9% from the same quarter in 2003. The increase was
driven by strong demand in storage resources management (SRM)
software.
IDC analyst Bill North said device and San management software
use grew by 36% year on year, and SRM software growth was driven
"primarily by customer need to support larger and more complex
storage networks, combined with a gradual decline in the more
mature backup and archive software market".
The SRM market now represents "the largest functional market of
storage software, growing more than 30% year on year", IDC
said.
Backup and archive software continued to grow, showing a 9.2%
year-on-year increase. The storage replication software and file
system software functional markets also showed strong results in
the first quarter, with 13.5% and 18.5% year-on-year growth,
respectively.
The battle for the top spot in software sales changed little
over the past year. EMC and Veritas Software posted the strongest
results among the top five suppliers, with 30.5% and 23.4% growth,
respectively.
EMC led the overall market in the quarter, with $602m in revenue
and a 32.5% share of the market, up 3.4% over the same quarter of
2003. Veritas held on to second place, with a 22.6% revenue share,
gaining more than 1% of market share year on year. Veritas reported
$418m in sales from storage software.
IBM and Hewlett-Packard each gained market share against
Computer Associates International, which resulted in a three-way
tie for third place in the market, with each company reporting
about $130m in revenue, IDC said.
In a separate forecast, analysts at Merrill Lynch revised
earlier predictions and said the storage software market will grow
at 7.3% through 2008. That compares with a combined annual growth
rate of 11.2% through 2007 that Merrill Lynch earlier
projected.
The fastest-growing segments of storage software are expected to
be hierarchal storage management and storage resource management,
where EMC has a dominant and growing presence, Merrill Lynch said.
The slowest-growing segment will be backup software, where Veritas
dominates.
Lucas Mearian writes for Computerworld